June 16, 2016 • 33 mins
In the late 19th century, a painting titled The Roll Call, by a virtually unknown artist, took England by storm. But after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why? And what does The Roll Call tell us about the fate of those first through the door?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Bushkin Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British monarchy,
built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
not open to the public, but you can apply to
go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
(00:36):
that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
and then a man named Desmond shaw Taylor comes and
gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection,
Early Middle aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You know, look at that building now, it's coming missing.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
A page, a nice jumble. Yes, I came here to
see a painting bought by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred
and fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside
the palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
(01:17):
All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
Enormous canvasses spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
Roll Call, eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The absolute point of the rocal is that it has
a single brilliant image idea.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
(02:04):
figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
the light directly on the man's face.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's a brave young man who manages to stand up brighton.
And this sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Saint James Pallace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals
on white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
defiant but draggled.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's real and they are standing in a line, but
they're not in a straight line, and they're not anonymous. Yes,
so it's got one fantastic idea foth.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
My name is Malcolm Glabo. You're listening to the first
episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
(03:23):
One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
I think too often we make up our minds about
something that has happened, and then we move on without
(03:45):
pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
(04:07):
you want to see it before you listen to this story,
you can pause and go to Revisionististory dot com. But
in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous, something
extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because it's
an issue that we deal with all the time today,
which is what it means to be the first, the
first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
(04:34):
in England at that time is controlled by something called
the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
(04:55):
an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music
painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
(05:15):
and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Academy hangs at painting on the wall matters a lot.
If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
they sky it, that means your painting is considered second class.
If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
(05:41):
Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
being hung at all. But if they hang at painting
near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
where was roll Call hung Gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
(06:03):
line in Gallery.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Two I was reading about it creates an extraordinary sensation. Yes,
completely in an unusual way, even for that time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
The day the show opens, the crowds make a bee
line for Roll Call.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The crowds were so great that you had to have
basically we employ warden, but they're police to say you know,
they touch or yeah, move on.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is people
camping out in line for two days to buy Beyonce tickets,
or the kind of frenzy the Beatles faced when they
first came to America. Roll Call is the hit of
the Royal Academy show. After that, Roll Call goes in
a tour of England. In Newcastle, men walk up and
down the sidewalks with sandwich boards saying simply, the Role
(06:53):
Call is coming. In Liverpool, twenty thousand people go to
see it. In those days, prominent paintings were put on
little playing cards, and two hundred and fifty thousand cards
are sold with an image of Roll Call. A bidding
war breaks out among potential buyers. Only Queen Victoria, one
of the greatest art collectors of her day, decides she
(07:14):
absolutely has to have it, which is how it comes
to hang in Saint James's Palace. Desmond Shaw Taylor must
have seen Roll Call a thousand times, but as he
shines his flashlight over the artist's brushwork, it's like he's
seeing it for the first time. He's excited about every
little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That's pretty fabulous, isn't it. It's always so difficult too,
and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
And if you just get one gray color and just
a little bit of unpicturing and just pick out fulls
of shoes, just very impressive. H I mean, i I'm
(07:57):
enjoying looking at this.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's a remarkable story, but I've left out the most
remarkable fact of all. The artist, an unknown, more importantly woman.
At a time when the art world was overwhelmingly male,
British women in the nineteenth century weren't even allowed to
study fine art. It was a closed world. And suddenly,
(08:20):
in the middle of that closed world there enters a
striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson, raised in Switzerland by
wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and she breaks down the door.
I've been fascinated by the story of Elizabeth Thompson for years,
by roll Call, and more particularly by what happened to
(08:43):
Elizabeth Thompson after the stunning success of her painting. What
fascinates me is how her story is repeated over and
over again. Once you know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see
Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I don't know if you've ever heard
(09:04):
of Julia Gillard. She was the first woman to become
Prime Minister of Australia. He served from twenty ten to
twenty thirteen, and she had an incredibly tumultuous time in office.
Near the end of her tenure, she gave a famous
speech on the floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the
part everyone noticed.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
sexist views and who are melogynists are not appropriate for
high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
has got a piece of paper and he is writing
out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
(09:43):
motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a miro.
That's what he needs.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
When I heard Julia Gillard give that speech, I thought
about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and Thompson were in the
same situation. Women dealing with the consequences are breaking down
the door. I also remember Elizabeth Thompson when I think
of Hillary Clinton. Theres an idea that I think helps
(10:10):
explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard. It's
called moral licensing. It's a fairly new concept in social psychology.
It was developed by a number of the best young
psychologists in the field, chief among them Daniel Efren, who
teaches at the London Business School. Here's the official definition
of moral licensing. Past good deeds can liberate individuals to
(10:33):
engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic,
behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling
or appearing immoral. When we do something good, in other words,
sometimes we then, on occasion, give ourselves permission to do
(10:54):
something bad. One of Efron's first experiments in moral licensing
was in two thousand and nine. He surveys people who
publicly self identify as supporters of Barack Obama for president,
and what he finds is that supporting a black politician
doesn't always signal that you're a racially open person who
(11:14):
is inclined to be progressive in other areas. It can
also have the opposite effect. It can free you up
to go back to your old racist ways because you've
proven to the world what a good person you are.
And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk of the
people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely, at
least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
I was taken by this finding that people appear to
be able to license themselves based on pretty paltry virtues.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I met Efren in his office in London, up in
near Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian
behavior doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good
deeds just lead to more good deeds?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
So your question is about when does evidence that I'm
virtuous lead to more virtuous behavior versus when does evidence
a virtue lead to less virtuous behavior? When does doing
good lead to doing bad? And when is doing good
lead to doing more good? This is the million dollar
question in this literature, and it's been a puzzle.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
All we know is that human beings go both ways
after a good deed, They sometimes follow a virtuous trajectory
and sometimes they don't. There's what happens after Jackie Robinson
broke the color line in nineteen forty seven becomes the
first ever black professional baseball player. Within five years there
are one hundred and fifty black ball players in the
(12:44):
major leagues. I think that's what we expect. It fits
our romantic notions of progress. The door opens for one person,
and soon it opens for everyone. But what we have
to understand is that a lot of times the opposite happens.
The door opens for one person and they're the only
one to slip in those who open the door then
(13:05):
feel free to close it again for everybody else. A
couple years ago, the Israeli author Almost Ilan wrote a
history of the Jews in Germany called The Pity of
It All. It's a fascinating book for precisely this reason,
because what Ilan is interested in is the great paradox
of Germany's history with the Jews. Here we have a
country that committed the greatest historical atrocity against the Jewish people.
(13:30):
Yet if you take the long view, as Alan does,
you see that time and time again, German culture welcomed Jews,
or at least welcomed some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards,
Many German states had a tradition of what were called
court Jews. Most Jews were banned from living in major
German cities. There were severe restrictions on what they could do,
(13:52):
but simultaneously there was a group of protected Jews who
were allowed to live and work within the city walls.
In the seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed
by the number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to
locusts bringing ruin to Christians, so he banished wish them
from Berlin, but not all of them. He kicks out
one hundred and forty families, and he keeps one hundred
(14:15):
and twenty. That pattern is repeated over and again in
the German speaking world. In the eighteenth century, the philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish, was considered one of the
most brilliant men in Europe. He lives in Berlin, and
people come from far and wide to visit him. How
does he stay in Berlin? The King grants him exceptional status.
(14:38):
That is to say, and these are Amasalon's words here,
Mendelssohn is the Unjewish jew. The same happens one hundred
years later with Bertold Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the
most widely read German novelist of his day. He's called
the German Dickens. This is now at a time of
virulent antisemitism throughout Germany, but Bertold Auerbach is somehow immune
(15:02):
from that prejudice. Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite,
loves ours and calls him a man rooted in German life.
One of the brothers grim thanks Auerbach for curing him
of prejudice. The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but
they love Aerbach. What's going on here? It sounds like
(15:23):
a contradiction, it's not. It's just textbook moral licensing. The
Germans love Berthold Auerbach, and because they think they have
demonstrated their open mindedness by loving this one Jew, they
feel free to act in the most despicable way to
other Jews. You open the door to one outsider, and
that gives you permission to close the door to others.
(15:53):
After seeing roll Call at Saint James's Palace, I went
to the tape and sat on a little bench outside
the Turner Gallery with Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art
historian who has written extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact,
I first learned about Liz with Thompson because they stumbled
across an absolutely brilliant article by Usherwood in the Woman's
(16:14):
Art Journal. It was called Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case
of tokenism. Usherwood is wispy and tweedy in the best
possible English way. I imagined that after our chat he
would go straight home, spend an hour in the garden,
then go for a brisk walk across a few soggy
fields through the dogs. Ushwood argues that in making sense
(16:36):
of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson, it's really important to
understand the role of the Royal Academy. They control the
art world at this point forty aloof dictatorial white men, as.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
An institution that was just very very powerful and much
resented by people who weren't very very well by it.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
ignored everyone else's art, including an eighteen six tventy four.
The Irwin roll call went up so.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
That yeah, there were six thousands paintings which didn't mate
the expertise of thousands.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
There's only one art show that matters in England, and
it's so small that thousands of artists are stuck on
the outside looking in. There's a revolution brewing. So along
comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman, an outsider, with an absolutely
brilliant painting, and the Academy hangs it on the line
(17:41):
in Gallery two, and everyone thinks this is a sign
that the Academy is finally opening its doors to what
to the Holy Grail membership in the Royal Academy itself.
It seems destined to happen. One of the most prominent
art critics of the day writes in The Daily Telegraph
that role call success proves that, and I'm quoting here,
(18:02):
real genius has no insurmountable obstacles in the English art world.
In short order, Thompson is nominated for election to the
Royal Academy. She's one of the most famous artists in England.
She has a huge public following. Every artist in the
country is riveted by her candidacy. And what happens. She loses,
(18:25):
but by just two votes. It doesn't feel At the end,
everyone says, this is progress. Here we have a young artist,
still in her twenties, and on her first try she
comes within a hair's breadth of acceptance into the old
boys club. Everyone thinks that she's going to be a
lock for election the next time round. They look at
(18:45):
her and they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson
submits another painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called
Quatro Bras, a depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
By that time, she's celebrity and has fantastic assistance from
the Niamators, I mean three hundred soldiers point operator, so
she could paint that picture.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after Roll
calls Triumph. So what happens to Quatrabra?
Speaker 6 (19:18):
What they do is they stuff it away in an
obscure corner. Says quite hard.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Seas Thompson's new work is hung in the lecture room
at the back the black hole. And the black hole
is where her election to the Royal Academy also goes.
Remember she was within two votes of getting in, and
everybody said she's a lock for the next time around,
but she isn't. There is no next time around. Instead,
the male Academy members have these absurd internal conversations about
(19:47):
how it would work if a woman ever got elected.
What about the etiquette?
Speaker 6 (19:51):
That's a banquet? How would that they arranged? Who would
bring in? Is the thing for the male academician to
escort a woman into the bank cred for? How would
that work with a woman?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Academy members passed new regulations to limit the privileges of
any women whom might get elected in the future. Because
they've proven their bona fides, they hung rall call on
the line in Gallery two. Who can doubt how open
and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
(20:25):
the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
It's a thrilling depiction of a charge of the Scots
Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
(20:45):
again to get elected. She can read the writing on
the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
six children. Her career took a backseat to her husband's.
(21:09):
When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
about her, his own wife, one of the most famous
artists in England.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
His autobiography four hundred and fifty five pages, she's not
mentioned in the index he mentions that he was married,
he mentions that he did have children, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if
the whole incident with her near election to the Royal
Academy never happened. Today people would write an entire book
about it. But she's been defeated and she knows it.
Here's all she says. As it turned out in eighteen
seventy nine, I lost my election by two votes. Only
(21:50):
since then, I think the door has been closed. And
wisely that's the part that always gets me. And wisely
she's given up. Remember how I'm mentioned that when I
saw a roll call, the first thing I thought about
(22:12):
was Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia. That's
because it's the same story. Gillard's election was a milestone
in Australian history, the same way it would be for
any country. Australia had been an independent nation for more
than a century, one hundred and ten years of uninterrupted
male rule, and that came to an end in twenty
(22:35):
ten with this funny whip, smart tough woman. In former
British colonies like Australia, the representative of the British crown
is called the Governor General, and the Governor General is
the person who swears in the new Prime minister. When
Gillard stands up to take the oath of office, it's
a doubly incredible moment.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
What made it loom large for me that day is
our governor General at that time was the first woman
to ever serve as Governor General.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
This is Julia Gillard telling the story.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And I could see in her and in her eyes,
you know, this incredible shock or delight that she was
going to be the person to swear in the first
woman prime minister. I Silia Eileen Dillar Clelia firm and
declared that I will well and truly said the Commonwealth
(23:30):
of Australia. And you know, she subsequently said to me, look,
I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
think i'd live to see the day our nation had
a female prime minister.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's a big deal. And Gillard, like many at the time,
thinks that Australia has undergone a permanent transformation. And she
also thinks that after the novelty of her election passes,
she'll just be Prime Minister. Gillard, the fact of her
gender will become unremarkable, the way the fact of a
baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
If you'd asked me then that all would have played
itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
sort of the political cycleod go back to normal. And
I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
When was the first moment that you realized you were wrong?
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Oh, look, I don't think it was a you know,
it wasn't the thud of a penny dropping in my brain.
But it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the
time we were in the government's second year and we
were putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against
(24:39):
that by the opposition and in the community was getting
hotter and shriller. It was in the course of that
the gendered stuff really started to show.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Things got ugly.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
You're the people elected this money, soch get right down.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Her opponents would circulate lude sexual cartoons of her. She
would be referred to in the newspapers as Julia, as
if she was a reality TV star and not the
head of state. The media would constantly refer to the
outfit she wore, or how much cleavage she showed, or
the tone of her voice. The CEO of a major
Australian company publicly called her an unproductive old cow. One
(25:28):
restaurant offered on its menu Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail,
small brass, huge thighs and a big red box. Was
there any particular moment or thing said that that hurts
you the most?
Speaker 4 (25:43):
I mean, it's obviously not a good thing to look
out on a scene of protesters and see yourself described
as a bitch and a witch and things like that.
But for me, actually, the worst moment in my prime
ministership was not in and of itself a gendered remark,
but came from a shock jock.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
She's talking about the Rush Limbar of Australia, a major
radio personality who hosts a fundraiser for the Conservative Party,
the other party, not Julia Gillards.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I had recently lost my father. My father died
while I was Prime Minister. And he said to this
audience that my father had died of shame because he
was ashamed of me as prime minister. I mean that
was the worst.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that's appalling.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It is appalling, It is appalling, and you know it's
you don't expect to have to do that in your life,
and you don't expect that, you know, someone like my mother,
who's just a lovely woman and a great Australian citizen,
should have to tolerate that being said about the husband
she's just lost.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Why do you think that intelligent, educated members of a
progressive country feel they can get away with such vile
behavior because they've just elected a woman, they've proven their
progressive bona fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy.
When the female governor generals swear in the female Prime minister,
Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
(27:14):
what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillo can't
fait back, can't she? Until the very end of your
tenure as Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
lip about this.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yes, I think I did tell me.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
About that, about your decision of how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
looked upset, then that would be used against me. Personally,
(27:57):
but more importantly against women generally, that there would have
been people muttering to themselves. You know knew women weren't
up for this. You know knew they couldn't take it
when they're going got tough.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Then, near the end of Gillard's time in office, a
prominent member of her own party, the man she's chosen
to be speaker, is found to have sent sexist text messages,
and incredibly, her critics come after her. Gillard. They accuse
her of condoning sexism because she's associated with this man.
(28:32):
She sits in her office in disbelief.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
You know, I don't want to use any bad language
to you, but I did have just going through my
brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I was thinking
wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot believe that
after everything I've had to listen to, now I'm somehow
(29:00):
going to walk into a parliament and people who have
used gendered insults against me are now somehow going to
try and give me a lecture on sexism. Like the
injustice of this was just boiling in me.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Gillard just starts listening all the things Abbot has said
and done to her and other women over the years.
She lets him have it.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition,
as Minister for Health said, and I quote, abortion is
the easy way out. I was very personally offended by
those comments. You said that in March two thousand and four.
I suggest you check the records.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This is live on the floor of Parliament. If you
watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front of her.
She's dressing him down to his face, and the longer
she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I was also very on behalf of the women of
Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
the leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
(30:31):
of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
the misogyny of the leader of the opposition, cat calling
across this table at me as I sit here as
Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
(30:54):
I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
when the leader of the Opposition all next to a
sign that described me as a man's I was offended
by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
(31:15):
later of the oppositions, every die in every way, across
the time the labor.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This was twenty twelve, it was practically yesterday. At her
last news conference as Prime Minister, Gillard says, what I
am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier
for the next woman, and for the woman after that
and the woman after that. And I'm proud of that.
But forgive me for being a little less optimistic than
(31:41):
she was. The difference between Julia Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson
is that Thompson never had the chance to give a
speech like that on the floor of Parliament. She went
away quietly. Gillard got the chance to stand up and
to be heard. And I suppose that's progress. But the
(32:01):
underlying dynamics these two women faced are they all that different?
A woman gets accepted into a man's world. She thinks said,
somehow something has changed, but nothing has changed. The men
pat themselves on the back, and then they slammed the
door shut again. Tony Abbott the man she eviscerated. He
(32:22):
later becomes Prime Minister of Australia. By the way, here's
a partial list of the countries that have had one
and only one female leader. Open the door, pat themselves
on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
(32:51):
and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
(33:14):
do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It
helps you can get more information about this and other
episodes at revisionististory dot com, or on your favorite podcast
app Our show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott
and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flonon Williams is
(33:38):
our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka and the Panoply management
team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Bushkin Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British monarchy,
built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
not open to the public, but you can apply to
go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
(00:36):
that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
and then a man named Desmond shaw Taylor comes and
gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection,
Early Middle aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You know, look at that building now, it's coming missing.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
A page, a nice jumble. Yes, I came here to
see a painting bought by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred
and fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside
the palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
(01:17):
All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
Enormous canvasses spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
Roll Call, eighteen seventy four.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
The absolute point of the rocal is that it has
a single brilliant image idea.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
(02:04):
figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
the light directly on the man's face.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
That's a brave young man who manages to stand up brighton.
And this sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Saint James Pallace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals
on white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
defiant but draggled.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's real and they are standing in a line, but
they're not in a straight line, and they're not anonymous. Yes,
so it's got one fantastic idea foth.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
My name is Malcolm Glabo. You're listening to the first
episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
(03:23):
One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
I think too often we make up our minds about
something that has happened, and then we move on without
(03:45):
pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
(04:07):
you want to see it before you listen to this story,
you can pause and go to Revisionististory dot com. But
in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous, something
extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because it's
an issue that we deal with all the time today,
which is what it means to be the first, the
first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
(04:34):
in England at that time is controlled by something called
the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
(04:55):
an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music
painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
(05:15):
and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Academy hangs at painting on the wall matters a lot.
If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
they sky it, that means your painting is considered second class.
If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
(05:41):
Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
being hung at all. But if they hang at painting
near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
where was roll Call hung Gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
(06:03):
line in Gallery.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Two I was reading about it creates an extraordinary sensation. Yes,
completely in an unusual way, even for that time.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
The day the show opens, the crowds make a bee
line for Roll Call.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
The crowds were so great that you had to have
basically we employ warden, but they're police to say you know,
they touch or yeah, move on.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
The only contemporary equivalent I can think of is people
camping out in line for two days to buy Beyonce tickets,
or the kind of frenzy the Beatles faced when they
first came to America. Roll Call is the hit of
the Royal Academy show. After that, Roll Call goes in
a tour of England. In Newcastle, men walk up and
down the sidewalks with sandwich boards saying simply, the Role
(06:53):
Call is coming. In Liverpool, twenty thousand people go to
see it. In those days, prominent paintings were put on
little playing cards, and two hundred and fifty thousand cards
are sold with an image of Roll Call. A bidding
war breaks out among potential buyers. Only Queen Victoria, one
of the greatest art collectors of her day, decides she
(07:14):
absolutely has to have it, which is how it comes
to hang in Saint James's Palace. Desmond Shaw Taylor must
have seen Roll Call a thousand times, but as he
shines his flashlight over the artist's brushwork, it's like he's
seeing it for the first time. He's excited about every
little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
That's pretty fabulous, isn't it. It's always so difficult too,
and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
And if you just get one gray color and just
a little bit of unpicturing and just pick out fulls
of shoes, just very impressive. H I mean, i I'm
(07:57):
enjoying looking at this.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
It's a remarkable story, but I've left out the most
remarkable fact of all. The artist, an unknown, more importantly woman.
At a time when the art world was overwhelmingly male,
British women in the nineteenth century weren't even allowed to
study fine art. It was a closed world. And suddenly,
(08:20):
in the middle of that closed world there enters a
striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson, raised in Switzerland by
wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and she breaks down the door.
I've been fascinated by the story of Elizabeth Thompson for years,
by roll Call, and more particularly by what happened to
(08:43):
Elizabeth Thompson after the stunning success of her painting. What
fascinates me is how her story is repeated over and
over again. Once you know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see
Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I don't know if you've ever heard
(09:04):
of Julia Gillard. She was the first woman to become
Prime Minister of Australia. He served from twenty ten to
twenty thirteen, and she had an incredibly tumultuous time in office.
Near the end of her tenure, she gave a famous
speech on the floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the
part everyone noticed.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
sexist views and who are melogynists are not appropriate for
high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
has got a piece of paper and he is writing
out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
(09:43):
motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a miro.
That's what he needs.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
When I heard Julia Gillard give that speech, I thought
about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and Thompson were in the
same situation. Women dealing with the consequences are breaking down
the door. I also remember Elizabeth Thompson when I think
of Hillary Clinton. Theres an idea that I think helps
(10:10):
explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and Julia Gillard. It's
called moral licensing. It's a fairly new concept in social psychology.
It was developed by a number of the best young
psychologists in the field, chief among them Daniel Efren, who
teaches at the London Business School. Here's the official definition
of moral licensing. Past good deeds can liberate individuals to
(10:33):
engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical, or otherwise problematic,
behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for fear of feeling
or appearing immoral. When we do something good, in other words,
sometimes we then, on occasion, give ourselves permission to do
(10:54):
something bad. One of Efron's first experiments in moral licensing
was in two thousand and nine. He surveys people who
publicly self identify as supporters of Barack Obama for president,
and what he finds is that supporting a black politician
doesn't always signal that you're a racially open person who
(11:14):
is inclined to be progressive in other areas. It can
also have the opposite effect. It can free you up
to go back to your old racist ways because you've
proven to the world what a good person you are.
And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk of the
people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely, at
least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
I was taken by this finding that people appear to
be able to license themselves based on pretty paltry virtues.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I met Efren in his office in London, up in
near Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian
behavior doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good
deeds just lead to more good deeds?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
So your question is about when does evidence that I'm
virtuous lead to more virtuous behavior versus when does evidence
a virtue lead to less virtuous behavior? When does doing
good lead to doing bad? And when is doing good
lead to doing more good? This is the million dollar
question in this literature, and it's been a puzzle.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
All we know is that human beings go both ways
after a good deed, They sometimes follow a virtuous trajectory
and sometimes they don't. There's what happens after Jackie Robinson
broke the color line in nineteen forty seven becomes the
first ever black professional baseball player. Within five years there
are one hundred and fifty black ball players in the
(12:44):
major leagues. I think that's what we expect. It fits
our romantic notions of progress. The door opens for one person,
and soon it opens for everyone. But what we have
to understand is that a lot of times the opposite happens.
The door opens for one person and they're the only
one to slip in those who open the door then
(13:05):
feel free to close it again for everybody else. A
couple years ago, the Israeli author Almost Ilan wrote a
history of the Jews in Germany called The Pity of
It All. It's a fascinating book for precisely this reason,
because what Ilan is interested in is the great paradox
of Germany's history with the Jews. Here we have a
country that committed the greatest historical atrocity against the Jewish people.
(13:30):
Yet if you take the long view, as Alan does,
you see that time and time again, German culture welcomed Jews,
or at least welcomed some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards,
Many German states had a tradition of what were called
court Jews. Most Jews were banned from living in major
German cities. There were severe restrictions on what they could do,
(13:52):
but simultaneously there was a group of protected Jews who
were allowed to live and work within the city walls.
In the seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed
by the number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to
locusts bringing ruin to Christians, so he banished wish them
from Berlin, but not all of them. He kicks out
one hundred and forty families, and he keeps one hundred
(14:15):
and twenty. That pattern is repeated over and again in
the German speaking world. In the eighteenth century, the philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish, was considered one of the
most brilliant men in Europe. He lives in Berlin, and
people come from far and wide to visit him. How
does he stay in Berlin? The King grants him exceptional status.
(14:38):
That is to say, and these are Amasalon's words here,
Mendelssohn is the Unjewish jew. The same happens one hundred
years later with Bertold Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the
most widely read German novelist of his day. He's called
the German Dickens. This is now at a time of
virulent antisemitism throughout Germany, but Bertold Auerbach is somehow immune
(15:02):
from that prejudice. Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite,
loves ours and calls him a man rooted in German life.
One of the brothers grim thanks Auerbach for curing him
of prejudice. The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but
they love Aerbach. What's going on here? It sounds like
(15:23):
a contradiction, it's not. It's just textbook moral licensing. The
Germans love Berthold Auerbach, and because they think they have
demonstrated their open mindedness by loving this one Jew, they
feel free to act in the most despicable way to
other Jews. You open the door to one outsider, and
that gives you permission to close the door to others.
(15:53):
After seeing roll Call at Saint James's Palace, I went
to the tape and sat on a little bench outside
the Turner Gallery with Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art
historian who has written extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact,
I first learned about Liz with Thompson because they stumbled
across an absolutely brilliant article by Usherwood in the Woman's
(16:14):
Art Journal. It was called Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case
of tokenism. Usherwood is wispy and tweedy in the best
possible English way. I imagined that after our chat he
would go straight home, spend an hour in the garden,
then go for a brisk walk across a few soggy
fields through the dogs. Ushwood argues that in making sense
(16:36):
of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson, it's really important to
understand the role of the Royal Academy. They control the
art world at this point forty aloof dictatorial white men, as.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
An institution that was just very very powerful and much
resented by people who weren't very very well by it.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
ignored everyone else's art, including an eighteen six tventy four.
The Irwin roll call went up so.
Speaker 6 (17:11):
That yeah, there were six thousands paintings which didn't mate
the expertise of thousands.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
There's only one art show that matters in England, and
it's so small that thousands of artists are stuck on
the outside looking in. There's a revolution brewing. So along
comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman, an outsider, with an absolutely
brilliant painting, and the Academy hangs it on the line
(17:41):
in Gallery two, and everyone thinks this is a sign
that the Academy is finally opening its doors to what
to the Holy Grail membership in the Royal Academy itself.
It seems destined to happen. One of the most prominent
art critics of the day writes in The Daily Telegraph
that role call success proves that, and I'm quoting here,
(18:02):
real genius has no insurmountable obstacles in the English art world.
In short order, Thompson is nominated for election to the
Royal Academy. She's one of the most famous artists in England.
She has a huge public following. Every artist in the
country is riveted by her candidacy. And what happens. She loses,
(18:25):
but by just two votes. It doesn't feel At the end,
everyone says, this is progress. Here we have a young artist,
still in her twenties, and on her first try she
comes within a hair's breadth of acceptance into the old
boys club. Everyone thinks that she's going to be a
lock for election the next time round. They look at
(18:45):
her and they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson
submits another painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called
Quatro Bras, a depiction of the Battle of Waterloo.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
By that time, she's celebrity and has fantastic assistance from
the Niamators, I mean three hundred soldiers point operator, so
she could paint that picture.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after Roll
calls Triumph. So what happens to Quatrabra?
Speaker 6 (19:18):
What they do is they stuff it away in an
obscure corner. Says quite hard.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Seas Thompson's new work is hung in the lecture room
at the back the black hole. And the black hole
is where her election to the Royal Academy also goes.
Remember she was within two votes of getting in, and
everybody said she's a lock for the next time around,
but she isn't. There is no next time around. Instead,
the male Academy members have these absurd internal conversations about
(19:47):
how it would work if a woman ever got elected.
What about the etiquette?
Speaker 6 (19:51):
That's a banquet? How would that they arranged? Who would
bring in? Is the thing for the male academician to
escort a woman into the bank cred for? How would
that work with a woman?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Academy members passed new regulations to limit the privileges of
any women whom might get elected in the future. Because
they've proven their bona fides, they hung rall call on
the line in Gallery two. Who can doubt how open
and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
(20:25):
the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
It's a thrilling depiction of a charge of the Scots
Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
(20:45):
again to get elected. She can read the writing on
the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
six children. Her career took a backseat to her husband's.
(21:09):
When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
about her, his own wife, one of the most famous
artists in England.
Speaker 6 (21:17):
His autobiography four hundred and fifty five pages, she's not
mentioned in the index he mentions that he was married,
he mentions that he did have children, and that's it.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if
the whole incident with her near election to the Royal
Academy never happened. Today people would write an entire book
about it. But she's been defeated and she knows it.
Here's all she says. As it turned out in eighteen
seventy nine, I lost my election by two votes. Only
(21:50):
since then, I think the door has been closed. And
wisely that's the part that always gets me. And wisely
she's given up. Remember how I'm mentioned that when I
saw a roll call, the first thing I thought about
(22:12):
was Julia Gillard, the former Prime Minister of Australia. That's
because it's the same story. Gillard's election was a milestone
in Australian history, the same way it would be for
any country. Australia had been an independent nation for more
than a century, one hundred and ten years of uninterrupted
male rule, and that came to an end in twenty
(22:35):
ten with this funny whip, smart tough woman. In former
British colonies like Australia, the representative of the British crown
is called the Governor General, and the Governor General is
the person who swears in the new Prime minister. When
Gillard stands up to take the oath of office, it's
a doubly incredible moment.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
What made it loom large for me that day is
our governor General at that time was the first woman
to ever serve as Governor General.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
This is Julia Gillard telling the story.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
And I could see in her and in her eyes,
you know, this incredible shock or delight that she was
going to be the person to swear in the first
woman prime minister. I Silia Eileen Dillar Clelia firm and
declared that I will well and truly said the Commonwealth
(23:30):
of Australia. And you know, she subsequently said to me, look,
I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
think i'd live to see the day our nation had
a female prime minister.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
It's a big deal. And Gillard, like many at the time,
thinks that Australia has undergone a permanent transformation. And she
also thinks that after the novelty of her election passes,
she'll just be Prime Minister. Gillard, the fact of her
gender will become unremarkable, the way the fact of a
baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
If you'd asked me then that all would have played
itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
sort of the political cycleod go back to normal. And
I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
When was the first moment that you realized you were wrong?
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Oh, look, I don't think it was a you know,
it wasn't the thud of a penny dropping in my brain.
But it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the
time we were in the government's second year and we
were putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against
(24:39):
that by the opposition and in the community was getting
hotter and shriller. It was in the course of that
the gendered stuff really started to show.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Things got ugly.
Speaker 3 (24:53):
You're the people elected this money, soch get right down.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Her opponents would circulate lude sexual cartoons of her. She
would be referred to in the newspapers as Julia, as
if she was a reality TV star and not the
head of state. The media would constantly refer to the
outfit she wore, or how much cleavage she showed, or
the tone of her voice. The CEO of a major
Australian company publicly called her an unproductive old cow. One
(25:28):
restaurant offered on its menu Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail,
small brass, huge thighs and a big red box. Was
there any particular moment or thing said that that hurts
you the most?
Speaker 4 (25:43):
I mean, it's obviously not a good thing to look
out on a scene of protesters and see yourself described
as a bitch and a witch and things like that.
But for me, actually, the worst moment in my prime
ministership was not in and of itself a gendered remark,
but came from a shock jock.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
She's talking about the Rush Limbar of Australia, a major
radio personality who hosts a fundraiser for the Conservative Party,
the other party, not Julia Gillards.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
And I had recently lost my father. My father died
while I was Prime Minister. And he said to this
audience that my father had died of shame because he
was ashamed of me as prime minister. I mean that
was the worst.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Oh wow, yeah, yeah, that's appalling.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
It is appalling, It is appalling, and you know it's
you don't expect to have to do that in your life,
and you don't expect that, you know, someone like my mother,
who's just a lovely woman and a great Australian citizen,
should have to tolerate that being said about the husband
she's just lost.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Why do you think that intelligent, educated members of a
progressive country feel they can get away with such vile
behavior because they've just elected a woman, they've proven their
progressive bona fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy.
When the female governor generals swear in the female Prime minister,
Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
(27:14):
what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillo can't
fait back, can't she? Until the very end of your
tenure as Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
lip about this.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yes, I think I did tell me.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
About that, about your decision of how to handle it.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
looked upset, then that would be used against me. Personally,
(27:57):
but more importantly against women generally, that there would have
been people muttering to themselves. You know knew women weren't
up for this. You know knew they couldn't take it
when they're going got tough.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
Then, near the end of Gillard's time in office, a
prominent member of her own party, the man she's chosen
to be speaker, is found to have sent sexist text messages,
and incredibly, her critics come after her. Gillard. They accuse
her of condoning sexism because she's associated with this man.
(28:32):
She sits in her office in disbelief.
Speaker 4 (28:35):
You know, I don't want to use any bad language
to you, but I did have just going through my
brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I was thinking
wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot believe that
after everything I've had to listen to, now I'm somehow
(29:00):
going to walk into a parliament and people who have
used gendered insults against me are now somehow going to
try and give me a lecture on sexism. Like the
injustice of this was just boiling in me.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Gillard just starts listening all the things Abbot has said
and done to her and other women over the years.
She lets him have it.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition,
as Minister for Health said, and I quote, abortion is
the easy way out. I was very personally offended by
those comments. You said that in March two thousand and four.
I suggest you check the records.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This is live on the floor of Parliament. If you
watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front of her.
She's dressing him down to his face, and the longer
she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I was also very on behalf of the women of
Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
the leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
(30:31):
of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
the misogyny of the leader of the opposition, cat calling
across this table at me as I sit here as
Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
(30:54):
I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
when the leader of the Opposition all next to a
sign that described me as a man's I was offended
by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
(31:15):
later of the oppositions, every die in every way, across
the time the labor.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
This was twenty twelve, it was practically yesterday. At her
last news conference as Prime Minister, Gillard says, what I
am absolutely confident of is that it will be easier
for the next woman, and for the woman after that
and the woman after that. And I'm proud of that.
But forgive me for being a little less optimistic than
(31:41):
she was. The difference between Julia Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson
is that Thompson never had the chance to give a
speech like that on the floor of Parliament. She went
away quietly. Gillard got the chance to stand up and
to be heard. And I suppose that's progress. But the
(32:01):
underlying dynamics these two women faced are they all that different?
A woman gets accepted into a man's world. She thinks said,
somehow something has changed, but nothing has changed. The men
pat themselves on the back, and then they slammed the
door shut again. Tony Abbott the man she eviscerated. He
(32:22):
later becomes Prime Minister of Australia. By the way, here's
a partial list of the countries that have had one
and only one female leader. Open the door, pat themselves
on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany, Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
(32:51):
and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
(33:14):
do us a favor and rate us on iTunes. It
helps you can get more information about this and other
episodes at revisionististory dot com, or on your favorite podcast
app Our show is produced by Mia LaBelle, Roxanne Scott
and Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is
composed by Luis Guerra and Taka Yasuzawa. Flonon Williams is
(33:38):
our engineer, fact checker Michelle Siraka and the Panoply management
team Laura Mayer, Andy Bauers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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